Calling an Audible

Our entire school had spent over three hours in standardized testing in the morning. Immediately following this time, one of my 8th grade classes came to me for English class. They were spent. They were fidgety. They were not in the right state of mind to do what I had planned. Neither was I. So, I changed my plan right then, as they sat there, and what I created on the spot was far better than my original plan.

I had created a short list of concept words relevant to “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.

· Irony

· Humor

· Hypocrisy

· Evil

· Understatement

My original plan was to have the students find an example of each of these words in the story, mark the example, and prepare to explain it to a small group first, and then the entire class later. Snore.

My new plan was to have my students move into five groups. One member from each group would select a concept word from my “duck bucket,” and the group would then be responsible for presenting this concept—in light of “The Lottery”—to our class. We spit-balled some ideas of presentation possibilities. They ranged from skits to songs to raps to puppet shows. I vetoed anything that sounded remotely like an essay, because I was a bit spent from the hours of testing too. We decided that each presentation needed to include at least three examples of the concept. Then, the groups had the class period that day and the following day to prepare. Presentations were set for Friday. I spent those class periods listening, answering questions, and laughing. I did a lot of laughing.

And the results were far better and far more entertaining than my original idea. A member of the class videoed the presentations so that both of my eighth-grade classes could see all of the presentations.

“How did you grade this?” you might ask.

“I didn’t. I never grade group work.” More on this at another time.